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Shadowlyger posted:Do it. Do iiiiiiiit. gently caress that. I saw her up on the balcony beforehand, nearly dropping my loving controller in the process. PT is one hell of a trip but it just reaffirms that the best part about these games is also the part I struggle to deal with. 
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Mar 22, 2015 14:02
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I never played The Dark Eye but I distinctly remember seeing ads for it in magazines back in the day, you don't forget visuals like that. I should watch an LP or something. I also remember a first person shooter that was horror themed that used digitized graphics for its enemies but the name escapes me at the moment. I don't know if it was any good but once again the magazine ads were striking.
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Mar 22, 2015 16:47
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The only problem with Dark Eye is the gameplay can be obtuse as hell. Still cool though. I have a softspot for all those early/mid 90's PC multimedia type adventure games, even if they sucked they still had this creativity and bizarreness to them that games have kind of lost since then.
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Mar 22, 2015 18:50
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I think I finally found something to scratch that Social Horror game itch in We Happy Few. In practice, it probably won't be anything more than Dishonored/Bioshock but with constant sim restraints of The Ship, but maybe it could work?
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Mar 22, 2015 22:16
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Playing Alien Isolation. Pretty scary.
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Mar 25, 2015 16:12
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Yodzilla posted:I never played The Dark Eye but I distinctly remember seeing ads for it in magazines back in the day, you don't forget visuals like that. I should watch an LP or something. Was it an arcade shooter? Carnival comes to mind.
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Mar 25, 2015 16:33
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Kulkasha posted:Was it an arcade shooter? Carnival comes to mind. Carnevil gotta get your wordplay right!
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Mar 25, 2015 18:00
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I realized that Fraps takes screenshots of how I see the game, Steam takes screenshots of how the game sees the game, and dosent show the ENB mod. Side by side comparison shows that with the mod there is next to no ambient lighting, but actual light sources are a bit brighter, maybe harsher light. Colors are also more muted in the daytime "normal" sections. Also the Noise Effect (which IIRC you could turn off and on in the options of the PS2 version?) seems reduced? Not sure I like one over the other. With the mod makes it IMO a bit more unsettling as you have to rely on your flashlight more but the noise effect kind of defines the game so ehhhh Left is without the mod right is with it                 I can continue posting more if anyone wants but I dont want to clutter up the thread if its annoying. Basticle fucked around with this message at 21:33 on Mar 25, 2015 |
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Mar 25, 2015 21:27
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Basticle posted:but the noise effect kind of defines the game so ehhhh Something about those areas being shrouded in darkness but still being able to see, especially with the noise effect, seems very "Silent Hill" to me in some way. I feel like you're not quite getting the "developer intention" with the opaque shadows. Also the lighting in the third picture seems to effect how scared/shocked Heather seems. Personally, I would turn it off. Of course these are just my opinions. Lighting in horror games is the perfect topic for this thread, so feel free to post as many pictures as you like. I'm trying to think of horror games that don't rely on darkness in some way as a fear inducer but I'm not coming up with any. I guess you could argue any games that pre-dated shadows. SolidSnakesBandana fucked around with this message at 23:01 on Mar 25, 2015 |
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Mar 25, 2015 22:57
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Finally downloaded the PT demo It was pretty cool, and the start of it was pretty tense, but I can't understand why people are saying it's so terrifying. Yeah there were moments when it was tense, that's for sure, but they were mostly near the beginning. The rest consisted of me running back and forth trying to solve the puzzles before looking it up and realizing I had been wasting my time the entire way. Like the baby in the fridge thing. It was kinda tense at first because I thought it was going to drop on me, but after ten minutes of running around and interacting with everything and trying to figure things out by audio cues I looked it up the answer and I wasn't even close. By that point I started getting real sympathy for the main character because -I- wanted to strangle that kid for crying the entire time
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Mar 26, 2015 01:56
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That's PT's problem. It's loving horrifying. Until you've spent several tens of minutes wandering the same hallway trying to figure out what to do next. Speaking of PT, I sure hope Kojima's departure didn't gently caress over Silent Hills.
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Mar 26, 2015 02:06
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PTs best moments are unscripted like when the ghost randomly appears in the hall or on the railing or right behind you in the loving mirror. It would be better if it wasn't (intentionally) convoluted but as a teaser for what is possible it couldn't be better.
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Mar 26, 2015 03:49
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Trying to create an unscripted horror game seems like an impossible task.
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Mar 26, 2015 05:01
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SolidSnakesBandana posted:Trying to create an unscripted horror game seems like an impossible task. Hopefully not. The few attempts at some form of procedural horror haven't exactly worked, but at the same time they were kind of derivative in many ways. I think to do procedural or at least less scripted horror right will take a wildly different approach to just "Slender/Amnesia with randomized room layouts"
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Mar 26, 2015 05:33
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The problem with all "procedural horror" seen so far is that it's really just one layer of rolling a dice and choosing stuff from a table. While tables are of course a big aspect of procedural generation, they really need to step up the AI game and make otherworldly characters with alien motivations that are at least somewhat believable. Alien: Isolation tried this and failed horribly, but I'm pretty sure it can be done to a reasonable degree. Still, the effort involved in this is so great, that I don't know if it's actually worth it. Whatever they manage, it's not gonna be half as good as some good old, well-written, scripted horror. Emergent gameplay is good as filler but it's never going to be as unsettling as a well-written piece. I mean, do you expect Radiant AI to reproduce the same feeling you got when reading The Willows? True horror is difficult. Jump scares are cheap.
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Mar 26, 2015 05:48
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Pochoclo posted:The problem with all "procedural horror" seen so far is that it's really just one layer of rolling a dice and choosing stuff from a table. While tables are of course a big aspect of procedural generation, they really need to step up the AI game and make otherworldly characters with alien motivations that are at least somewhat believable. Alien: Isolation tried this and failed horribly, but I'm pretty sure it can be done to a reasonable degree. Still, the effort involved in this is so great, that I don't know if it's actually worth it. Whatever they manage, it's not gonna be half as good as some good old, well-written, scripted horror. Emergent gameplay is good as filler but it's never going to be as unsettling as a well-written piece. I mean, do you expect Radiant AI to reproduce the same feeling you got when reading The Willows? True horror is difficult. Jump scares are cheap. Certainly, it's easier to achieve a cohesive experience just by writing it all out, but I think the main appeal, and the reason people are interested at all in playing/making a "procedural" horror is due to the water cooler effect those games tend to produce. It's neat to be able to come away from a game and have your own story to tell from the experience. That and it takes fuller advantage of the whole interactive element that serves as a unique strength for games as a medium. I think it's possible to get a good procedural horror game without inflating time and budgets to crazy extremes. For example, the whole AI problem wouldn't be such a big problem if the game was revolved around a horror premise that didn't need monsters stalking you around maze-like environments Dead Space style. One of the most effective horror movies for me has always been Misery, because of the simple setting and premise. So imagine the horror game version of that, where you are trapped in someone's house and have to keep yourself in one piece in time to either escape yourself while they leave on momentary trips, or find a way to get messages sent out to the world to speed up the time the police are going to discover what happened and come rescue you. This type of setting could lend itself fairly well to some procedural elements, as here the layout of a single house is of the utmost importance. Simply changing the layout could change the experience and keep it tense between play-throughs as you hobble around trying to find the phone, or something you can use as a lockpick later. Similarly, all of the development time could go into making just ONE unique AI in the form of your kidnapper, whose patrol routes and mannerisms could be changed fairly simply. Even dialog trees can be done in semi-randomized ways given simple Mad-Libs style scripts going on behind the scenes. I think the problem is that everyone is so focused on just trying to recreate the same game experiences we already have, and are just tacking on procedural elements superficially.
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Mar 26, 2015 06:04
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You can make procedural horror by making unpredictable spookster AI.
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Mar 26, 2015 06:07
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I feel like procedural horror could be done to great effect if it was a horror game about glitches
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Mar 26, 2015 06:08
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My idea for procedural horror was similar to Bert's. You were in a town being stalked by something, and the win conditions were to defeat the monster or escape. However, you never quite knew what would work or what the monster would do each time you loaded the game up. It might be aggressive, or liable to gently caress with you. You didn't know where the town exits were, and you didn't know what disasters might be waiting on the outskirts. You'd need to sleep and such, and as things became increasingly dire suddenly your home, or other safe havens you went to wouldn't be as safe anymore. It's a simple description, but it's be hell to execute. Scripted is way easier. Linear Zoetrope fucked around with this message at 09:50 on Mar 28, 2015 |
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Mar 26, 2015 06:12
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Butt Ghost posted:You can make procedural horror by making unpredictable spookster AI. See "Spooky's house of jump scares" for examples. For a serious answer, I think that "procedural" horror is possible but would be very difficult, because as soon as the player figures out the AI's behaviour algorithms it would immediately stop being scary. So you either have to get them to change behaviour over time, or just make them so complex that players can't figure them out. I think the former could actually be pretty effective, just because it would specifically take advantage of the player becoming complacent.
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Mar 26, 2015 06:20
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A good mix of scripted/unscripted is best. Like System Shock 2 has respawning enemies but they spawn far out of your sight with their AI constantly running. So you may approach a previously cleared hallway and hear a Midwife's homicidal cooing or open a door and HOLY gently caress HYBRID WITH A SHOTGUN. My problem with a lot of horror game design is twofold: either enemies exist to attack you or everything is in an enclosed room. Like take Dead Space, practically every enemy is constantly aware of your presence the moment you become aware of them. There's something special about taking an enemy by surprise because there's that chance you surprise them. The other issue is horror taking place in enclosed spaces where each area is independent from the other. I have little fear if a big rear end monster can't open the door behind me. So yeah, more games where the AI behaves independent of the player and combine that with games where areas aren't connected by loading points.
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Mar 26, 2015 06:47
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A really long hallway with procedurally built windows that procedurally designed monsters will randomly jump through.
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Mar 26, 2015 07:00
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Neo Rasa posted:A really long hallway with procedurally built windows that procedurally designed monsters will randomly jump through. They could probably do this for the next Resident Evil game. Call it a return to the fundamentals.
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Mar 26, 2015 07:03
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A game that will connect to your Facebook and send procedural skeevy messages to all your friends and family.
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Mar 26, 2015 07:05
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Basticle posted:I realized that Fraps takes screenshots of how I see the game, Steam takes screenshots of how the game sees the game, and dosent show the ENB mod. The mod looks kinda meh. Silent Hill I remember just isn't that dark, and the noise is indeed a big part of the look. Maybe I just don't like things that are different.
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Mar 26, 2015 09:11
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The issue with procedurally made horror games (among other things) is that you need to find a good balance between it being difficult enough to be legitimately threatening but not so difficult that you have to start getting gamey with it and exploiting mechanics. That is partially why monsters on patrol routes works well for this kind of thing, they might instakill you if they catch you but you can run avoidance well enough. Compare that to Dark Souls and it's ilk, where everything is so hard that a lot of people, myself included, go for mechanic exploit and end up taking down bosses by shooting it a million times with bad arrows while cowering behind a glitched out rock.
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Mar 26, 2015 11:46
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DreamShipWrecked posted:The issue with procedurally made horror games (among other things) is that you need to find a good balance between it being difficult enough to be legitimately threatening but not so difficult that you have to start getting gamey with it and exploiting mechanics. That is partially why monsters on patrol routes works well for this kind of thing, they might instakill you if they catch you but you can run avoidance well enough. This is something I think that even a lot of normal horror games miss. There are so many games where you just die over and over, and it's not scary, it's frustrating. Tension is when you're just barely scraping by, not when you keep reloading the same section over and over until you finally manage to get past it. Left 4 Dead is a good example of how to make player characters pretty tough while at the same time JUST BARELY surviving each segment, and it's not even a "horror" game, really.
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Mar 26, 2015 13:20
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FirstAidKite posted:I feel like procedural horror could be done to great effect if it was a horror game about glitches A horror game that emulates Vinesauce's real time corruptor but there's a bunch of spooky assets hidden in the code so instead of goombas being replaced with bushes and eggs they're randomly replaced with a blood smear or a pixelated corpse.
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Mar 26, 2015 13:47
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This loving Alien is pissing me off.
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Mar 26, 2015 14:26
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I remember saying something about randomly generated enemies back when Resident Evil: Homecoming came out. There was a great bit where you had to navigate this hanging maze in an abyss. It was tense as hell and in the end there we no enemies, but I kept expecting there to be. I never did another playthrough, but I'd have liked to have seen differences like enemies spawning in there because you'd have been complaicent going through it a second time.
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Mar 26, 2015 15:03
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Jsor posted:A game that will connect to your Facebook and send procedural skeevy messages to all your friends and family. Finally the unlimited potential for scumbaggery that is gamergate can be tapped for good instead of for evil.
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Mar 26, 2015 15:08
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Is anybody here playing Bloodborne? I think there's an argument to be made that it's a horror game. They really went all-out with the enemy design and there hasn't been a single one that didn't make me think "What the hell is that".
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Mar 26, 2015 15:18
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HellCopter posted:Is anybody here playing Bloodborne? I think there's an argument to be made that it's a horror game. They really went all-out with the enemy design and there hasn't been a single one that didn't make me think "What the hell is that". Yeah totally. From Software's adventure games generally start out like typical fantasy fare, but then get more horrific and more out there with the designs and levels the further you explore their worlds. Bloodborne really feels like a Demon's Souls 2 or King's Field 5 though in that it feels like it starts out, thematically, where those games ended. Compare to say Dark Souls 2 which is much more typical to how western fantasy stuff is in games with the mines run by big orc looking guys, the more fan servicey female enemies, all the animal themed enemies and such.
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Mar 26, 2015 15:22
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HellCopter posted:Is anybody here playing Bloodborne? I think there's an argument to be made that it's a horror game. They really went all-out with the enemy design and there hasn't been a single one that didn't make me think "What the hell is that". Seriously. I was running around exploring and opening doors and such. I'd run out of souls so why not blindly run around ya know? Well I went through this doorway and the cleric beast just drops down out of nowhere. Fucker looks fantastic. Of course he murdered me. But he looked so cool doing it.
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Mar 26, 2015 15:28
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Len posted:Seriously. I was running around exploring and opening doors and such. I'd run out of souls so why not blindly run around ya know? Well I went through this doorway and the cleric beast just drops down out of nowhere. Fucker looks fantastic. Of course he murdered me. But he looked so cool doing it. I have to say, all the bosses are incredible in how, uh, murky and ethereal they look? They're not ghosts but just the massive amount of wavering cloth and stuff on them, and how it's difficult to get too good look at them because of how aggressive they get, I love it.  It's sort of reminiscent of how Gollum looked in the first release of Fellowship of the Ring I guess. I think a big reason for how successful a lot of From's games are as horror products is that the presentation in general doesn't show things off a lot. Cutscenes of bosses coming in tend to be brief, fights are very ferocious and quick to end once you engage enemies, it's cool. Also the way they have that layered scream where you can still hear their human voice is amazing and way cooler than the generic deep growl these types of creatures would typically have.Also the changes to the combat in Bloodborne are genius, as everyone around you is a human that has become a beast. Yet you yourself only have two ways to successfully engage fight in the game. Like an animal you can either pick up enemies from a group one by one by drawing them away or waiting til they lag behind the others, or you just dive in and go nuts. When you take damage, there's a brief window where you can recover it by hitting the enemies that damaged you. So in a game where everyone talks about going mad and not being infected and not being corrupted and such, the core of the combat is still that you have to stay super focused but, like a cornered animal, go completely nuts and crush everything at all costs if you get surrounded. AND you're rewarded for pulling that off by being healed a lot, it's stunning. I have to say, also, if you've played the previous games it's definitely more of a horror game just from the fact that you don't really get tons of armor and there's no shields. Coming off playing the past games so much, walking around each of those dark corners without being able to hold a shield up is terrifying in and of itself. They also re-did how the healing items work again, as sort of a merger of the grasses in Demon's Souls and the Estus thing in Dark Souls, with a similar system for your ammunition. It's rare to totally run out of either, but you can be fairly limited per sessions of the game, so you have to make every shot count like in classic survival horror stuff. Finally, the game has what is basically a King's Field mode. You get some items a little bit in that let you access randomly generated dungeons (like Diablo III it's not tile by tile random but still awesome) and these are quite difficult. They're like old school King's Field or Ultima Underworld with way more traps everywhere, vast underground cemetaries and ancient ruins, hordes of aggressive but weak zombie type dudes and skinless berserker guys, it's great. They could have built a whole game around just this content honestly and the idea that it's just an optional but massive side thing is pretty outstanding. I mean if you have a PS4 your other options are Revelations 2 (excellent), Evil Within (I love it but I realize it's way unpolished), and, uh, the upcoming Until Dawn which frankly looks embarrassing even for the PS3 game it began life as. I would strongly recommend Bloodborne to any horror game fan with a PS4. Hope Soma Bringer is good.
Neo Rasa fucked around with this message at 16:10 on Mar 26, 2015 |
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Mar 26, 2015 16:03
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Decided to ditch the mod    
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Mar 26, 2015 16:59
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Bloodborne is the Vampire Hunter D game I've always wanted to play. Not counting that crappy PS1 game where the door sounds were ripped from Resident Evil.
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Mar 26, 2015 19:40
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I think a really good example of open world is Shadows of Mordor. Almost the entire game is the open world, and the missions are mainly there to teach you how to play in the sandbox. All the orcs are off doing their own thing, fighting monsters, slaves, or eachother, and if an orc does something noteworthy then he becomes a captain. I'm not sure how deep the rabbit hole goes but the game appeared to be keeping track of every loving enemy and what they were doing. I'm thinking something like that combined with something like Sir, You Are Being Hunted (I assume, because I haven't played it) would make for a good horror game.
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Mar 27, 2015 04:54
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Hunted is really good at creating tension because it has excellent sound design and the enemies are relentless. Having a group of robots making a beeline directly towards you while a balloon with a searchlight is hovering over your only escape route is genuinely thrilling. It suffers from the typical issue of having absolutely zero direction but taking those kind of unscripted thrilling moments and combining them with some kind of story would be good. Darkwood has a lot of good ideas going for it. It's one of those survival games but there's a lot of weird random poo poo, set characters, and a plot of sorts to achieve. This War of Mine is also good in that it provides direction while having plenty of emergent moments. That's the important thing. Totally unscripted games are boring you've got to give your player a push in some direction.
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Mar 27, 2015 05:14
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The thing is that sure, your reptilian brain can get scared at something jumping in front of you in the middle of the night, it will work, but that's not horror, that's just fear. To really loving unsettle a human being, to make one feel horror and dread, it takes another human. That's actually a theme I'd like to be explored more in horror games. It's always monsters and ghosts and stuff. But normal living humans are, hands down, the scariest creature to populate the planet. I guess the problem is that it gets too intense when you go down that road. I don't think a game that properly emulates the experience of being hunted by a seriously disturbed serial killer, for example, will be very popular or politically correct.
Pochoclo fucked around with this message at 05:26 on Mar 27, 2015 |
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Mar 27, 2015 05:23
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